Transparent &Thankful

So much to be thankful for this year. I am a very reflective [and in, contemplative, not as in shiny] person, but I don't always feel comfortable sharing all my thoughts. Unless you're Keith, in which case I share everything, even before I've digested it all, and sometimes, just sometimes, I sound crazy doing so. My evening walk/run time is when I think about my day to try to sort through the good, the bad, and some days, the intolerable.

A while back someone commented to me that based on my blog, our life must be constantly happy and fun! Not quite. We're just a normal family getting through each day with as much fun as we can and without dwelling on the difficult. And, I've yet to get those baby books done, so this is our version of a baby book. [Momma loves you, babies!]. See? So it's important to try to remember the good. But I thought I would make an attempt to be more transparent with all of our goings-on, good and bad when I share what we are thankful for.

Belly Momma, or "the carrier". Can't start the list without her. Here she is with C, then G, last October.
And with all the kids from her belly, last ....hmmm...last October?

We're running a 10K together Thanksgiving morning [not really sure who talked who into doing that], and we're both a little nervous about completing the race. I've done a few races before so I'm pretty sure I can struggle through it as I've done in the past. Karen, all I can say is that if you can raise three kids while being pregnant with our big boys and injecting yourself in the leg and hips once a day for 10 weeks, you can do this race. It should be a cakewalk compared to 2 years ago. As we were going through the in-vitro & subsequential pregnancy, I never really understood what it would entail for Karen. How could I? I did not have kids yet, and as much as any person who likes kids or have been around kids a lot thinks they know what its like being a parent, they just don't. Being on this side of the parenting fence really gives me a deeper appreciation for the effort Karen put into growing us our boys. We love you, carrier! PS. This sentimental stuff in no way indicates that I am going to let you win at the end of the race. It's a race, dammit!

The Grands. You can't beat having two sets of involved grandparents.

The boys get to develop good relationships with them, and we get to have our baby-free vacations.Win-win. I am sure that I feel as sane as I do now because Nana and Oupa give us a night off every few weeks, and Gran GG and Grampie come for a weekend at a time so we can fly to some exotic locale, like Wisconsin!

Sleeping. I'm a sleeper. Always have been. I know some of you can get by with just a few hours of sleep, but I'm not one of you people. That's for sure. I can't tell you how we made it through the first few months of twin care, I've either blocked the memory or sleep deprivation caused me to not be able to file those memories away. I do remember sitting at the front window waiting for Nana or Gran to show up so I could just go take a 1-2 hour nap, and I also remember walking into the closet one night around 3Am when I could hear the boys crying. Why the closet? I'm not sure, I was so tired I just randomly stumbled around trying to find the source of the noise. Turns out they weren't crying at all, I was just hearing crying because I had heard it so much that day while they were awake. Now I am grateful for every full night of sleep I get in our comfy bed with the blackout curtains. It's heaven.

PeePee in the Potty. No, we're not potty trained yet. We're on a slow path towards it, with nightly peeing and sometimes #2-ing in the frog potties. I expect it to take a few more months, and I am perfectly happy with that. What I do love, and what the potty training is an example of, is that the boys are changing and growing and with each day and new quirky personality trait they expose, I become more infatuated with them. They're funny, very goofy, and stubborn. Each new thing they do makes me realize that the coming years are going to be so fun. Challenging? Of course, we're not slow learners, we've figured out the parenting thing is hard. And yes, we have naked sitting on the potty pictures, but I'm not sharing those here.

Dada. Love that guy, and not a day goes by that I don't congratulate myself for landing this catch.

I'm an optimist, so next year I hope to be grateful for:

Outgrowing strong-willed moments. I sometimes still have temper tantrum at 30, so it's unlikely they'll be over it by then, but a girl can hope, right?

Both boys eating the same foods consistently. Today we love grilled cheese, tomorrow we throw it on the floor. Yesterday we loved sweet potato, today the mere sight makes us have a fit. Yogurt? At least we'll always love yogurt.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Yep, it's still fun.

Playing in the pantry is still WAY fun.

Athens Bound!

Tomorrow morning early we head for an overnight stay in the place the magic began, Athens, GA! Our boys have been there several times, but since I'm feeling nostalgic let's look at their first visit to the UGA campus. This was last August, so the boys were...roughly...[counting on fingers, 'cause I never remember how they were when they did certain things...am definitely going to have to lie someday when they ask me how old they were when they first crawled...] 6 months.

We walked around north campus.

Then we stopped for a little bottle. These boys could eat, as evidenced in those juicy fat thighs! I love me some fat babies. I do not miss spending over $400 a month on formula.

Took a break from the bottle to look around. Can't help but notice how bald they were.

And promptly fell asleep.

Not unlike a night out back when we were in college, come to think of it. Have a good weekend!

Friday

It's Friday! I'm heading off to work at this ungodly hour, and Dada is staying behind as it is a Keith Friday.

Thursday

No other day feels as long as a Thursday. In other news, the boys are finally taking a liking to eating fresh fruits. It's very funny to watch, sometimes we get bites of the peel, other times we shove nearly the entire banana into our mouths. I would intervene to show them the proper way, but they don't like that, [we're not BABIES, Momma!], so I let them do whatever they want. They'll figure it out.

Wednesday

Here are a few photos that will NOT be on this year's Christmas card.

[we're really into body parts]. Dada's EEEYAAA.

[We're still fairly consistently having fits]. Awesome.

Tuesday

Happy Monday

Today's Picture

Brothers wrestling.

Snapshot

I've been a little negligent in uploading pictures, so I thought I'd have a week of some of my favorite pics. All that time I'll save not blogging I'll use to clean and organize the house. Right.

The boys with Dada, one random day after Dada got home from work. This one just makes me chuckle.

Baby-Free Vacation: The Rest of It

You might have noticed by now that I tend to start something, then I trail off and never finish that topic. Like the boys bedroom. I never did show you how it turned out. [it's because we realized the boys were pulling all the decor off the walls, so it's not finished. I hope to someday have 2 little boys that won't pull everything off the walls]. And then I start telling you about our trip, and I never finish.

The rest of our trip was good. Not spectacular, or filled with crazy adventures. Milwaukee & Madison are both nice towns, and the people there are even nicer. We toured breweries, tried beer at those breweries, walked through Madison and a little of the University of Wisconsin's campus [pretty, but hard to be impressed with other campuses when we attended UGA. Nothing compares, you know?], and took a drive through the countryside. All of these things we good, but truthfully the best part of the trip was having just a few days where Keith and I could enjoy each other and reconnect. Anyone with little kids can relate to the fact that sometimes you think of your spouse as the guy who didn't heat the bottles quickly enough or the man who doesn't seem to be able to properly clean the sippy cups' lids, so every once in a while it's nice to just be you & him talking and laughing, if only for a few hours before you're both tired and you nap most of the vacation, just 'cause you can.So, here are some of my favorite pictures of the rest of the trip. More will be on the BabiesSquared picture site tomorrow morning. Enjoy!

Pabst Mansion. We had a great tour of the grand old house. Unfortunately for you, no cameras allowed inside.


Miller Valley tour. Here Keith is copying someone else's pose. Probably doesn't make sense you to, but funny as hell for us.

We got our fill of the mass beer brewers and for a change of pace toured & sampled at Lakefront Brewery. We also ate at the Friday Fish Fry. It's a regional thing, we were told.

The next day we headed this way...

On our last day we took a tour of the relatively new Miller Park, home of the Brewers.


It's been said that back in the day Keith had mad ups and stole a few homers, and the old man just couldn't resist. After taking the picture we stood around for a few minutes thinking someone would surely rush out of the Brewer offices to offer Keith a contract to play center field...but I guess they must have been out to lunch.


NOTE: Keith would want me to tell you that there is a series of photos of him jumping higher than this [I made him do it again because I wasn't sure I captured the first attempt], but this series has the prettier background.


There you have it, good ole Midwestern fun!